Piling on the Spending

This year, millions of Americans accepted a salary freeze or
even a pay cut so they could keep their jobs. They ought to be
asking why the federal government isn't willing to make a similar
sacrifice.

Even though faced with declining tax receipts and increased
borrowing, lawmakers and President Barack Obama have ramped up
federal spending -- and not just temporary spending. They intend to
make this year's big increases permanent.

Washington will shell out almost $34,000 per household in 2009.
That's $8,000 per household more than it spent last year. Obama's
proposed 2010 budget would replace many "temporary" spending
programs with officially permanent ones, meaning that by 2019
(when, presumably, this recession will be over and the economy will
have enjoyed some years of growth) the federal government would
still spend $33,000 per household.

That number ignores any spending that might be caused by the
president's attempts to reform health care. Should his
administration succeed in creating a "public option" health plan,
the government could be on the hook for trillions more.

It's always difficult to make accurate long-term projections, of
course, since so much can change during any decade. But all the
experts -- the Congressional Budget Office, think tank economists
and even the White House -- agree that our country's deficit will
be massive in 2019.

Overspending isn't a partisan issue. Discretionary spending --
the money Congress chooses to spend (in contrast to entitlement
programs, which are on autopilot) -- has increased 74 percent
faster than inflation since 2001. That means a Republican congress
and a Republican president signed off on massive voluntary spending
increases, year after year. No wonder Republicans have lost their
brand.

When President George W. Bush flew home to Texas this year, he
left behind a $1.186 billion budget deficit. That was bad enough.
But Obama's policies have made that situation even worse. In just a
few months, his administration tacked another $659 billion on to
that amount. The fiscal year ends Sept. 30.

And plenty of this spending is simple waste.

Government auditors have combed through several recent budgets
and found that one-fifth of federal programs fail to improve life
for the groups they're supposed to be serving. That's at least $123
billion wasted, every year.

The Government Accounting Office found that almost half the
purchases made with federal credit cards are improper. How about
canceling those cards? And at least $2 billion in spending for
Hurricane Katrina has been stolen, with federal largess used to buy
NFL tickets, champagne bottles and at least one sex-change
operation.

The pity is that a balanced budget could be within reach. If
lawmakers would return to the level of spending they maintained
throughout the 1980s and '90s ($21,000 per household, adjusted for
inflation) we could balance the budget by 2012 without raising
taxes.

Doing this would require discipline, of course. That's why
lawmakers should pass a strong Taxpayers' Bill of Rights. TABOR, as
it's known, would help curb spending by limiting the growth of
federal spending to the inflation rate plus population growth. That
would save taxpayers trillions of dollars in the years ahead.

Of course, lawmakers would always be tempted to violate the
TABOR limits. They already get around self-imposed spending limits
by declaring any extra spending to be "emergency" spending, even if
it's for perfectly predictable events such as the census. So to
give TABOR teeth, it should require a supermajority -- two-thirds
-- of lawmakers to override the automatic spending limits. That
should limit congressional spending shenanigans.

In these difficult times, with everyone cutting back, Americans
ought to expect their government to do so as well. With a
Taxpayers' Bill of Rights, our government can reduce spending,
balance its budget and start encouraging growth again. It's an idea
that's long overdue.